always have been, always will be | jensoo

Muddled Thoughts

"Hong Jiyeon."

I limply shake the girl's hand, the girl that will be my roommate for the next few years, without looking at her face.

She drops her single box with a loud thud. "I heard you're Jennie Kim."

"You heard?" I mutter, sitting on the corner of my bed and lying back slowly. I'm not really interesting in what she's saying. My mind is still with a brown haired girl a dozen cities over.

"Well, you got dropped off in a limo. And your Dad was - "

"I get it." I close my puffy eyes. I hate the thought of being even the tiniest celebrity here on campus, and I think my roommate picks up on this quickly.

"Yeah, well. I just wanted to tell you I don't really care." She says easily, and I hear her kick her heavy boots off and light up a cigarette.

I sit up to look at her, pleased with her reply. The tall, shaggy haired girl I see staring back at me indifferently will not change a bit over the years to come. I am already thankful for her presence, especially since I do not think she knows I've been crying. Or maybe she avoids the subject altogether deftly, as she will for months to come when I try to stifle my tears in the night. Sometimes during the day.

The first two semesters will be hell for me, and even then I knew that.

Jiyeon never asked questions, never asked about my sad gaze out of countless windows, why I sometimes couldn't concentrate, why my nostrils flared and I looked away when she asked me about back home. She sensed something was up, but never asked for anything. Frankly, I don't think she cared. We were grateful for the benign presence in each other's life, and eventually we bonded over a shared love of, something I'd just discovered for myself, alcohol and partying.

It was a good way to forget. It was a good way to spend those minutes in between studying, regret, and near tears.

By my second year it was an inescapable routine, and I could stop feeling bad enough for there to be girls. A revolving door of girls, countless blonde girls. No - that was a lie. I could count them, easily. They dulled the pain, but only for a second. They made the hurt more biting, more intense in the dark, when I was alone. When the guilt came.

By my third year, I was acing all my tests and forgetting all my nights. They were the only years in my life I can honestly say I don't remember months of, and the only years of my life I was glad I didn't. I was in bad shape, and Hailey was there to never tell me that. I was grateful for it, because I needed not to hear it. The trust fund made life as close to college paradise as I could get, but the sense of a big piece of myself missing just made it a gross impersonation.

By my senior year, I was disgusted with myself and on the verge of forgetting why I was even punishing myself in the first place. I slowly put myself together, only barely aware of huge gaps, the empty spaces, and I was ready to graduate. I was fine, I convinced myself. Maybe I could have convinced myself of that forever.

Then I found a picture I didn't know I had.

The gin burned my throat, but only for the first couple of drinks. After that, it had a pleasant, dulling lime sensation that I only felt in my throat.

I had watched Jisoo walk all the way to the parking lot, retrieve her keys, and leave without giving me a second look. It stung, without question it stung. Now, I didn't want to think about it. So I drank gin on the rocks until I was bored and out of it enough to watch the news. I couldn't find the remote and I didn't care.

I am happy to admit that my mind was blissfully blank when Jiyeon came in, exclaiming from the second she opened the front door that it reeked of gin.

"Guess why." I slurred, setting my glass on the table with a loud clank.